{"id":2360,"date":"2021-01-12T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-01-12T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/wptest\/2023\/09\/06\/can-medieval-european-womens-religious-asceticism-be-compared-to-the-modern-secular-idealisation-of-slenderness\/"},"modified":"2021-01-12T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2021-01-12T00:00:00","slug":"can-medieval-european-womens-religious-asceticism-be-compared-to-the-modern-secular-idealisation-of-slenderness-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/philosophy\/2021\/01\/12\/can-medieval-european-womens-religious-asceticism-be-compared-to-the-modern-secular-idealisation-of-slenderness-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Can medieval European women&#8217;s religious asceticism be compared to the modern secular idealisation of slenderness?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The desire for control is the aetiological thread that links the asceticism of medieval women and the asceticism of the anorexic woman. The lives of medieval women are characterised by a lack of control of the self. They were defined by their role as \u2018body\u2019 where men were \u2018spirit\u2019 and therefore destined to become subservient wives valued on their bodily processes. Like the medieval ascetic, the anorexic seeks to conform to the slenderness ideal that originated in response powerful intuitions exerting power over women. To be slender meant to resist democratic forms of power such as consumerism and to control desire where the regulation of such felt out of one\u2019s control. Through Nietzsche\u2019s notions of The Ascetic Ideal, it is understood that asceticism forms out of human suffering and conflict and focuses on empowering existence through control. Control of the body by abstaining from food therefore becomes an active yet inward facing form of resistance over institutions that have dominated women\u2019s lives.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Issy Curtoys, 2021, Stage 2<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8792,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[311,22,128],"tags":[82,28,174],"class_list":["post-2360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-311","category-abstracts","category-stage-2-abstracts","tag-feminism","tag-identity","tag-religion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/philosophy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/philosophy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/philosophy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/philosophy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8792"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/philosophy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2360"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/philosophy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2360\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/philosophy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/philosophy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/philosophy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}